Elle Fanning Is Your Angsty, Pre-Frankenstein Mary Shelley

Before Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was a regular degular teenage girl. In the upcoming biopic from Saudi filmmaker Haifaa al-Mansour, Elle Fanning stars as the author in the course of plotting her famous novel. It’s half romance, half coming-of-age story: Mary’s relationship with the then-married poet Percy Shelley began as an affair, and she withstood sexism to bring Frankenstein to fruition. “I no longer see the world and its works as they before appeared to me,” Fanning says in the trailer. “Men appear to me as monsters.” Could anything be more timely? Mary Shelley premiered at last year’s Toronto Film Festival. See it in theaters May 25.